


The Other Half

by untune_the_sky



Series: Soulmate AU [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, First Kiss, First Meetings, Getting Together, Pre-Avengers (2012), Pre-Canon, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:19:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untune_the_sky/pseuds/untune_the_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“...and when one of them meets the other half...the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment...”</p><p>- Plato</p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><br/><br/>For the longest time, Clint didn't have a soulmark. Everybody swore he hadn't been born with one, which wasn't usually a bad thing, it just meant his soulmate hadn't been born yet.
            </blockquote>





	The Other Half

**Author's Note:**

> So I love, love, love Soulmate AUs and there are some truly amazing ones out there. This idea popped into my head the other day and [Zippit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zippit/pseuds/Zippit) was kind enough to encourage me to write it. There may or may not be more to this 'verse, we'll see. As of right now, though, it's a stand alone.
> 
> Thanks to Zippit, Tink, and Stina for giving this a once-over for me. Any mistakes are my own, please feel free to point them out if you notice inconsistencies. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> ETA: Edited so the formatting of this matches the formatting of the later additions to this 'verse. :)

For the longest time, Clint didn't have a soulmark. Everybody swore he hadn't been born with one, which wasn't  _usually_ a bad thing, it just meant his soulmate hadn't been born yet. They took all the usual pictures, though, to document any tiny little marks — just in case. It wasn't until he was eight that something new turned up, but then nobody could figure out what it meant. It was a very, very small outline of what looked like a circle covered in spikes. It rested at the nape of his neck. 

His pediatrician shrugged philosophically about it when his mom took him in to have it documented, saying the early stages of soulmarks were often confusing, but that it would make sense in hindsight. Soulmarks changed from year to year — sometimes month to month, when one's soulmate was very young. The doctor told Clint's mother to photograph any changes that occurred, but not to worry overmuch. 

It took four more years for the spike-filled circle to actually change, though, and when it did, no one was sure what to make of the difference. Clint woke up one morning and his neck was tingling. It wasn't unpleasant, it didn't itch. It was just a noticeable sensation with no apparent cause, which was weird. So he went to his mother and asked her check it. When she did, she slapped the back of his neck, shrieking.

That, of course, had Clint shrieking right back at her as he ducked and wove away from her flailing. It wasn't until she'd successfully overcome her surprise (and fright) that she managed to take a picture so Clint could see what all the fuss was about. The little circle with its spikes was gone, replaced by lots of tiny specks. The specks, upon closer examination, turned out to be spiders. Teeny, tiny spiders. There were lots of them, too. 

Having spiders on his neck didn't bother him, though it gave his friends all kinds of heebyjeebies. Every few years after that Clint's soulmark changed again. The tiny spiders started disappearing. They weren't all gone at once. They just started getting whittled down, he supposed. It went from twenty-eight to eighteen when he was fourteen, which made him tilt his head to the side a bit, but he didn't think about it too much. He'd been with the circus for a year or so by then, his parents having died in the car crash shortly after the first time his soulmark changed. His brother dropped him off at the entrance and promised to come back, said he just needed to park the car. Only Barney never came back and Marla, the bearded woman, wound up taking pity on him. She fed him a hot meal after finding him curled up near the ticket booth.

Clint was pretty sure no one expected him to stay with the circus, but he was a good roustabout, doing whatever little things needed to be done. He never even flinched when the knives during the live routine landed a little closer to him than they had during practice. He was sixteen when he noticed that he'd lost six more of the little spiders, eighteen dropping to twelve. 

They stuck around for several years after that, almost offering Clint a sense of companionship as he started his own routine at the circus, surprising everyone with his talent for the bow and arrow. Sometime between then and his eighteenth birthday, he lost four spiders, though. He was never quite sure when they disappeared, as the circus’ movements didn’t really make it easy to keep track of that sort of thing and he was always busy. Clint kept at his archery, though, until he was twenty, eight little spiders on his neck watching as he got bored, as the circus started failing, as the towns they rolled through got less and less hospitable. It didn't take a genius to see that things weren't going to get any better, so Clint packed his bags and headed back to Iowa. If he wanted to get all the paperwork he needed for the next leg of his life, he'd need to do it where he was born.

Getting his GED took him a year. A year during which he kicked back in a shelter when he needed to and rented a room from a widow when he had the money. But he knew he'd need the legitimate GED so that, when he joined the army at twenty-one, not a single piece of his documentation was forged. He knew people who could've done the fakes, if he'd asked, but he wanted to get where he was going on his own merits.

Clint was twenty-four when three more spiders disappeared. One of his friends noticed before he did, so his documentation for that change is a shaky cell phone picture that does nothing to hide the gritty lines of sand caked onto his neck and in between the links in the chain holding his dog tags. 

He kept those five spiders with him through his second tour of Afghanistan but lost one when he was twenty-six and then another at twenty-seven. He was down to two at twenty-eight. They weren't as tiny as they'd always been, but still small enough that attempting to identify species was virtually impossible. Some people got clever with that when it came to insects or animals, but Clint had never felt the need to poke and prod at his soulmark too much. It'd do what it did and he'd meet his soulmate when he met them.

Clint kept on keepin' on. He'd been plucked out of his unit for special training and then slotted into a special forces unit not long after he'd finished. They made him their sniper, no questions asked after taking a look at his scores. He preferred the bow and arrow, but if you pressed him, he'd admit that he liked his rifle well enough. His accuracy and his kill record are what drew SHIELD's attention to him when he decided not to re-up. 

An unassuming man in a nice suit approached him to discuss the various options open to him as his career in the military came to an end. It wasn't a guarantee that he'd have a job. They made sure he understood that. But it was an _opportunity_. He'd be paid for his time during training. Assuming he passed whatever tests they shoved at him, he'd be given a position within the organization.

He passed their evaluations with flying colors.

"Sounds very... shady," Clint said, eyebrows raised. 

"No shadier than some of the things you did while with the circus, Mister Barton," Coulson replied. 

Snorting, Clint shook his head. "Nah, you can't turn that back on me. I stuck to strictly legal activities and I've got plausible deniability for any dirt you might have on the others." He smirked. "Nice try, though. I want an easy out, if I decide I don't like the direction your organization is pointing me in." 

"You'll be expected to sign NDAs, but SHIELD isn't interested in operatives who don't want to work with us," Coulson replied.

"Looking for loyalty?" 

"Always." 

The next time his soulmark changed, Clint was twenty-nine and in Namibia. He nearly had a heart attack. He went through most of his days not really thinking about his soulmate. They were out there, somewhere, and obviously changing. Whatever that meant. But when he woke up one morning and happened to check the soulmark. When he didn't see it anymore, he panicked. 

If it hadn't been for Coulson's presence and, ultimately, the other man's attention to detail, Clint might have just called the mission off entirely and gotten very, very drunk. Luckily, however, Coulson  _was_ there. He found the single spider hiding at Clint's hairline — and the faintest tracing of a web working its way down the back of his neck. So the mission went off without a hitch and Clint got new pictures taken. 

He still found himself rubbing at the nape of his neck every now and then, especially if he thought about the fear that had shot through him when he'd thought he'd lost the mark. Whoever his soulmate was, they were younger than him by a good bit and he'd always felt a little protective of his soulmark, a little like he needed to keep that safe in lieu of being able to keep his soulmate safe. 

Never once had he thought that his soulmate might  _die_ , that he'd lose the mark before ever meeting them. The mission in Namibia brought home to him that anything could happen. Hell,  _he_ could die before meeting them, given his line of work.

Years passed.

Clint went on mission after mission, far more cognizant of his own mortality than he'd ever been before. The spiderweb on his neck expanded. Every few months, it grew. He wound up with so many pictures just documenting its growth that he was pretty sure whoever was in charge of that kind of thing at SHIELD was going to start sending him angry notes. But it wasn't  _his_ fault his soulmate was doing... whatever they were doing. And really, Clint took it as a positive sign. The bigger the web got, the more secure he felt — like it meant his soulmate was safer. 

It covered his entire back by the time he was thirty five, wrapping around his ribs on both sides and curling just a little over his shoulders. He knew it freaked some people out, mostly temp members of his team on extended missions. Not everybody got such expansive soulmarks. Romantic ones were pretty dynamic, usually changing a lot over the course of a person's life, but tended to stay on one part of a person's body and didn't generally fluctuate in _size_ even though the image might change. Platonic soulmates weren't usually more than an inch or two in any one direction and they remained pretty stagnant.

Clint's... Clint's soulmark definitely didn't conform to people's expectations. He didn't care, though. Whatever it meant, he liked it. In his more sentimental moments — or his weaker ones, he guessed — he tended to think whoever his soulmate was, they were covering him in webs since they hadn't actually shown up in his life yet. Maybe they wanted to make sure he knew they were still out there somewhere — maybe they felt guilty for scaring him half to death that time in Namibia. 

He gets captured in Belarus by a splinter cell of some group Clint hasn't been adequately briefed about and his jailers decide that stripping him down will be the most efficient way to humiliate him. Little do they know what they were getting into. He loses his clothes with an almost philosophical shrug — it's not like he's actually naked in any way that matters. His soulmate's covered him from nape to ass crack, the web wrapping so far around his middle at that point the anchoring threads nearly overlap atop his sternum. He just smiles a little at the expression on the man's face when he sees the soulmark. 

Psy-Ops Score — Clint: 1, Terrorists: 0.

It's as they approach him with the jumper cables for the third time that he feels the familiar tingling, only now it's all along his back, rather than just at his nape. Throughout all the years that the web has grown, the spider's never moved. It's stayed hidden in his hairline. He suspects it's gotten larger as the web's grown, but he's never really been interested in shaving his hair off to get a better look at it. He sags forward in the chair they've tied him to, head hanging low, and listens to the men behind him as they shuffle back and forth. 

Words.

Words are happening in a language Clint doesn't speak well enough to follow, given how dazed he is. _Thirsty. So thirsty._ Then he feels a fingertip on his neck, following the path that the strongest of the tingling took, and whoever's standing back there drops the jumper cables. The lights flicker in the room and the guy shouts for someone before slicing the zip ties that bind Clint to the chair and pushing him forward so his head rests between his knees. 

Clint decides that's nice of them — considerate, almost, given how dizzy he feels, but he's so out of it at this point that he's not exactly tracking properly. 

It isn't until someone else has shown up and a lot more words Clint doesn't understand are thrown around that he gets an inkling that something big is going on. Something has definitely rocked his captors' world. The thought makes him laugh a little as the leader of the group approaches him and crouches in front of him. Taking a handful of Clint's hair in hand, the man lifts his head until Clint has no choice but to look him in the eye. Blinking slowly, he tries to focus. 

"You mark." 

Clint blinks again. 

"You mark. Who you soulmate?" 

Quirking a small smile, dazedly sensing he has some kind of advantage here that he didn't know about or suspect, he says, "Wouldn't  _you_ like to know?" 

And then he passes out. 

He wakes up two days later and Coulson's reading a magazine next to his hospital bed. He must make some kind of noise, since Coulson glances up and raises an eyebrow at him.

"You have an interesting way of getting out of untenable situations, Barton." 

"Hunh?" 

After sitting his magazine aside, Coulson picks up a Styrofoam cup from the bedside table and holds it out for Clint to take a careful sip before continuing, "We got a very polite note from the group that was holding you. They said they were very, _very_ sorry for their mistake and asked that we _please_ not send your soulmate to kill them all." 

Clint can't even follow that well enough to ask the next logical question. Luckily, Coulson takes pity on him and, sitting the cup aside, pulls a tablet out of the bag at his feet. He taps in a few different passwords and authorization codes that are probably so far above Clint's pay grade that he wouldn't even recognize it _as_ a level, then turns the tablet around for Clint to see the picture displayed there. 

It's his own shoulders. The webbing is visible — it seems darker than it was the last time he checked it. Clint doesn't know what that means and he's about to ask when he realizes there's something new between his shoulder blades. Reaching out, he pulls the tablet from Coulson's hand and, fingers a little uncoordinated, zooms in on the spot.

"Spider?" He asks, glancing from the arachnid on his back to Coulson. 

Expression remaining completely passive, Coulson replies, "A very particular  _kind_ of spider." 

Zooming in again, Clint squints, then chokes on air as he sees the very tiny, red hourglass in the spider's abdomen. "Black widow?" 

"Yes." Coulson reaches for the cup of water again, holding it out to Clint. 

Taking the water on autopilot, Clint shakes his head. "Not — y'know. Not that. Her." 

" _We_ don't know. But the men who captured and subsequently released you thought it was a distinct possibility. Any idea why?" 

"No. I mean — no." Finally taking another sip of water, Clint goes back to staring at the picture of his soulmark. "It uh. It changed. They'd..." Wincing, he clears his throat. "They'd electrocuted me twice. They were moving in to go again. I — it. It changed. Before they could. I guess. I guess it moved to this. And they... saw?"

"We're benching you," Coulson says. 

"What?" 

"You're off missions, at home and abroad. Go back to New York. Take care of your dog. Rest. Recover." 

"You're just — I'm. Are you  _firing_ me?" 

"No, but we don't require your particular skills at the moment and you _were_  just tortured. For several days," Coulson replies, tone mild as he reaches for his tablet. "Take care of yourself, Barton. We'll be in touch." 

Clint finds, after being discharged from the SHIELD-vetted hospital, that a ticket to New York has been purchased for him. The verification is the first email in his inbox when he checks it. So he goes home, the bandages on his arms drawing more attention than the pieces of web visible on the back of his neck. 

Bed-Stuy hasn't changed, his neighbors are still dealing with the tracksuit mafia — hell, so is Clint. They've raised his rent _again_ , the notice is in his mailbox along with a bunch of junkmail. He rubs at his eyes as he waits for Marie to answer the door so he can pick Lucky up. That accomplished, he limps his way to his apartment, his bow case over his shoulder, and unlocks his door.

Lucky looks at him, tail wagging slowly back and forth. "I dunno, kid. We'll catch up on Dog Cops or something. C'mon, I'm sure I've got some treats in here somewhere. They're probably not even stale." He's already decided to pick up Chinese from the place near the PetSmart as he trudges into his kitchen, only to freeze when he notices the woman sitting on the counter. Her legs are swinging back and forth and her hands are tucked beneath her thighs. 

Red hair, petite but curvy and pretty much gorgeous in a t-shirt and jeans, she's... she's something else. "Uh," Clint says, eyes wide. 

"You," she says, her voice a surprisingly sultry alto. "You have a problem." 

"I..." Clint coughs. "I have a lot of problems." 

She quirks a smile. "You have a problem with the Russians." 

"All of them?" 

Laughing, she hops off the counter and walks toward him. "Well, not with me, at least." 

"You're Russian?" 

"Yes," she answers, stopping right in front of him and tipping her head back so she can look him in the eye. "Or I used to be," she says, shrugging like it doesn't matter one way or the other. "I have friends in Belarus. They told me," she pauses, head tilting to the side like she's evaluating the information she was given. "They told me that they made some kind of terrible mistake. They were very, _very_ apologetic." 

Clint feels all the blood drain out of his face. It leaves him lightheaded. Only then it all rushes back and he knows he's flushed. "Were they?" He asks, voice a little weak. Lucky sits down next to him, his head moving so he can look at first one of them, then the other. 

"Mm... yes," she says, fingertips skimming the bandages on his right arm. She pauses, tapping gently against the tape that holds one end of a gauze down at his elbow. "I'm not sure I'll forgive them, though." She tilts her head to the side, eyes moving upward, along his arm to his shoulder. They stop at the side of his neck and he knows — he _knows_ she can see part of the web. "They weren't lying about it, though, were they? Your soulmark?" 

"What'd they say about it?" Clint asks, mouth dry. He can feel it again, the tingling that means — it means his mark's moving, it's changing. 

"They said," she murmurs, her eyes meeting his once more. "They said I marked the whole of you, from top to bottom. And when they thought to kill you just to be rid of you — apparently you were _very_ tiresome for them — I moved." 

"You... moved?" 

"The mark, it moved. I showed myself, they said." She smiles again.

Lucky presses himself against Clint's leg as Clint clears his throat. "It's um... it's pretty big. The mark. It's... grown. Over the years." 

"They tend to," she says, still smiling. "May I?" 

"May you?" 

"See it?"

She stands there, eyebrows raised, and Clint clears his throat yet again because... well. He just. She's _there_ , standing in front of him, and it's not like lightning's struck him or choruses of angels have started singing, but. But she... Clint doesn't know how to handle this. He's too stunned to sort through the cacophony in his head.

Moving slowly, he sets his bow case aside and licks his lips, then reaches up with one hand to hook the collar of his shirt with two fingers. He pulls, moving as little as possible because the injuries the men in Belarus gave him twinge at every shift of muscle. She hisses when he drops the shirt to the floor, her fingers hovering over the electrical burns on his chest before she gets distracted by the webbing she can now see more clearly. It still nearly touches over his sternum and she straightens as her eyes trace along the threads. Then she starts moving, telegraphing her intent as she steps around him. 

All the training he's ever received, in the military and with SHIELD, not to mention the school of hard knocks that the circus had been, screams at Clint not to let her stand behind him. He needs to keep her in sight, she's dangerous beyond measure and he shouldn't trust her at his back, in his blind spot. He ignores the voices in his head telling him to turn with her and closes his eyes, carefully regulating his breathing. 

He can hear her exhale, though he can't see her face, doesn't know if it's surprise or appreciation or something else entirely that elicited that response from her. But Clint definitely feels it when she presses her palm lightly to the left of his spine. "They didn't lie," she says, a strange note in her voice. "Mine is not so large." 

"It isn't?" Clint asks. 

"No, but it was very confusing, when I was young." Her fingertips trail down and around his side as she moves to stand in front of him again. "Sticks." 

"Sticks?" 

"And a rock." She's grinning now. "You're an archer, though, aren't you?" 

"Yes," Clint says, gesturing toward his bow case. 

"They changed. The sticks and the rock. One of the sticks broke. The rock fractured. Then the broken stick got taped back together. The rock and the unbroken stick laid next to one another for a long time. And then, when I was eight, the repaired stick changed into a bow, the tape was the grip. The unbroken stick and the rock became an arrow." She pauses, taking his right hand in one of hers and turning it so she can see the callouses on his palm. "A target appeared. Arrows in the center, bullseyes, all of them. So many arrows. Eventually, they buried the target."

"They know," he says, shock and mild panic shooting down his spine as he interrupts her. "SHIELD. SHIELD knows. About you and. And this — the marks." 

She arches an eyebrow.

"We have to leave," he continues, brow furrowing. "They can't — they'll try to take you in — take you away — and I don't. I don't know what they'll do, but they can't. I can't let them do that." 

“Don’t worry,” she says, her expression morphing into something almost fond. “I’ll take care of SHIELD. Before I do that, though, I’d like to help you with your Russian problem.”

“The tracksuit mafia?” Clint asks, nose wrinkling. They barely rate in the grand scheme of things, especially when he compares them to the trouble SHIELD will cause when they realize he's got _the Black Widow_ in his apartment in Bed-Stuy. “They’re definitely not as big a threat as SHIELD.”

Waving her free hand through the air almost dismissively, she says, “I’ve got a plan for SHIELD. But the Russians are preparing to try something very stupid and I’d like them out of the way, off the radar, before I approach SHIELD.”

“So you have a plan for the Russians, too.”

“Of course.”

“What kind of plan?”

The look she casts him as she laces their fingers together is almost coy. “Do you really want to know? I’ve heard you’re fond of your plausible deniability.”

Clint opens his mouth to reply, then shuts it and just shakes his head. “Food.”

It's her turn to blink. “Food?”

“I need some. And I gotta pick up some for Lucky, too.” Clint gestures to the dog still pressed against his leg.

“Okay?”

“So. Um.” Smiling through his shell shock, Clint offers, “If you… want to deal with the Russians while I do that, I can… buy you dinner?”

She laughs aloud, the sound bright and more surprised than anything else, like she didn't expect him to allow her to handle the Russians without a fight. “Yes, this is a good plan.”

So that’s what they do. Clint puts on a shirt and goes to PetSmart, then Jade Palace. He picks up enough food for at least three days before heading back to his apartment building. When he walks through the door, she's sitting on the counter again, papers spread out on either side of her.

“They won’t bother you anymore,” she says.

“What’s your name?”

Surprised again, she tilts her head to the side. “SHIELD doesn’t have that in its dossier?”

“They never showed me the dossier. They... kind of kicked me off active duty when they found out about the possible connection to you.”

“Hm... sloppy of them.”

“Well, or paranoid,” Clint offers with a shrug.

“I thought they’d attempt to manipulate me through you — hold you hostage, maybe, which is why I was waiting here for you.”

“I think they’re trying to tuck me out of the way so they can... I don’t know, find you or something.”

“ _Sloppy_ ,” she sing-songs.

“But - your name?”

“Natalia Romanova,” she says.

“Natalia,” Clint murmurs, moving around the counter to fill Lucky's bowl before he starts unloading the Chinese.

“The building is yours.”

Clint freezes, a container of shrimp lo mien suspended from his fingers. “What?”

Gesturing to the papers to both sides of her, Natalia hops down and takes the lo mien from him. “The Russians. They were going to increase rent _again_ so no one could pay it, then kick everyone out so they could flatten the building and make a parking lot or something. I convinced them not to.”

“And… now the building is…?”

“Yours. It’s all very official. Legal, even,” she says, opening the lo mien and reaching for a set of chopsticks.

Clint’s jaw works for a moment, but no words come out of his mouth.

“You’re welcome,” she says, eyes crinkling at the corners as she takes a bite of lo mien and shrimp.

“I - yes. That. Thank you,” he says, gingerly propping himself up against the counter behind him as he tries to work through this development. “I gotta lower rent,” he says.

“You need to find someone who knows how to run a building like this. Learn what rent needs to be to cover things like maintenance and property taxes,” she replies, pointing her chopsticks at him. Then she seems to realize he hasn’t opened any food for himself and sets hers aside to dig through the bags he brought home. Handing him the beef and broccoli, she continues, “I don’t know about any of that, but I’m sure you can find someone who does, no problem.”

“Right,” he says, nodding as he takes the food and grabs a fork. “Right, no. I can do that. Definitely.”

She shakes her head a little, voice _definitely_ fond as she says, “You’re very surprised.”

“I… yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t — and then you. I thought I was like. Losing my job? But then here you are and.” Clint waves his fork around a little, nearly losing the piece of broccoli that's speared on the end. “Suddenly, I own a building. And — I don’t. I mean.”

She's laughing at him. Laughing without laughing. It was like her eyes sparkle a bit, just dancing a little even though her lips stay straight and, if he wasn't looking at her so closely, he might not realize it.

“Jesus,” he breathes. “You’re here.” He puts down the beef and broccoli and just looks at her.

“I’ve always been… somewhere,” she points out, brows rising.

“Yeah, but I just. I knew you were… y’know, around. Somewhere. But. Here. You’re  _here_.”

She walks toward him, cocking her head to the side once she's directly in front of him. Hesitantly, almost warily, she reaches out and lets one hand rest at his waist. Clint watches her, watches a strange expression pass over her face. It's there so briefly and gone so quickly, he almost thinks he imagined it. Only, she steps a little closer, hand sliding around and under his arm where it hangs loosely at his side. It takes him a moment to realize what she's silently asking as her eyes search his but, once he gets it, he offers her an almost disbelieving smile as he raises both his arms so he can wrap them around her.

Natalia steps closer still, allowing herself to lean against him, her forehead pressed to his chest. He's surprised that she manages to place herself in the perfect position to avoid touching any of his injuries, but he suspects he shouldn’t be. One arm looped around her shoulders, the other resting low on her back, Clint lets himself press his nose to her hair and inhales slowly. “Hi,” he murmurs.

“I will always be here,” she says, voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “If you want me to be.”

“Yeah,” he whispers, not pausing to think about it. He doesn't  _need_ to think. He knows. He knows he’ll always want her near him. His shock has mellowed into wonder, the adrenaline fading from his system, which means he's better able to sort through all the changes he’s experienced in the last twelve hours. It isn't an earthquake, it isn't some type of apocalyptic level shift in the world or his perception of it. She's a quiet presence that he's never known before but he can recognize her now in the _thump-thump-thump_ of his pulse. It's not pounding, it's not frantic. She simply is. She exists, a steady warmth at the base of his spine, a comforting presence in the back of his mind, calm and reassuring all at once. “I will always want you to be here. Here with me,” he corrects himself, blinking. “Not... not here in this apartment.”

She laughs against his chest, her arms tightening around him where she’s settled them. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he says, nodding against her hair before resting his chin atop her head.

They stay like that for several long moments and he's almost worried by the silence that falls between them, but it's easy, not tense. So he holds her carefully and lets his eyes close.

“I’m not really all that hungry,” Natalia says, turning so her cheek is pressed to his chest.

“Me, neither. Um… are you tired?”

“Yes,” she says. “Sleep?”

“Sleep sounds good,” he says.

So he goes to make sure the bed is made, since he doesn't remember if he did that before leaving for the mission in Belarus, and she puts the food away. The bed _i_ _s_ made and, wonder of wonders, the sheets are clean, so he just turns them down and goes to brush his teeth. That seems like something he should do even though sunlight is still creeping through his window. She winds up watching him, resting her shoulder against the door frame until he's finished and they can switch places.

Clint doesn't have any expectations. Most people do, when they meet their soulmates. But based on the changes to his soulmark over the years, based on what those changes might mean given who she is... well. Clint just figures it's better to expect... not much. Or — not to expect something romantic. Because having expectations like that, making those kinds of assumptions, is a good way to wind up with your foot shoved so far down your throat you're tasting your own kneecap and he doesn't want that.

When Natalia comes out of the bathroom, he gives her a smile because why shouldn’t he? And then she pulls her shirt off over her head, letting it fall to the floor as she crawls onto the foot of the bed. “I felt it change, earlier. It was a big change. What does it look like now?”

Sitting down behind her, Clint pushes her hair to the side so the red-orange of the sunset coming through his window lights the planes of her back as he takes in the mark his soul has left on her. A bow about six inches high stretches from the base of her spine toward the right side of her rib cage at a slant. An arrow's nocked and five others are embedded in a cluster at the small of her back, fletching skyward and arrowheads buried, but the thing that catches his eye is the larger arrow barely peeking out from the band of her bra. He describes it to her, noting the differing colors of fletching on each individual arrow. When he mentions the last one is mostly hidden, she reaches around and unclaspes her bra, holding it in place in front but shrugging the straps down.

“It’s just... it’s got purple fletching and it’s... buried in your back,” he says, touching the spot where the arrow’s shaft disappears into her skin.

“That’s where the spider is,” she says, glancing at him over her shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Yes, it’s sitting in the same spot on your back.”

“Huh. Any ideas about the colors?”

Natalia smiles at him, still watching him over her shoulder. “No. But I’m not very interested in them at the moment. Maybe later.”

“Okay,” Clint says, smiling because she's smiling. How could he not respond?

“I’d wondered.”

“Wondered what?”

“If we were meant to be platonic.”

Still smiling, Clint shrugs a little. “Whatever you want.”

“Well,” she says, an eyebrow arching. “I think the marks answered the question.”

Clint has no expectations. He refuses to let himself think about anything but his complete lack of expectations for a moment. Not having expectations doesn't mean he can't hope, though, right? “What do you think the answer is?”

She doesn't respond to him immediately, just searches his expression, green eyes moving over his face before catching on his own and holding his gaze. Dropping her arms, she lets the straps of her bra slide off of her entirely, allowing it to fall off the side of the bed before turning to face him. She moves up, onto her knees, and straddles his hips as her hands frame his face. “I think,” she whispers, thumbs brushing his cheeks, “that I could love every part of you in every possible way with all that I am for the rest of my life, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“Oh,” he says, the word nothing more than an exhale as he watches her, hands braced at her waist. “Yeah,” he finally says, caught up in the warm-honey feel of her under his skin, the way she’s already hooked herself into the spaces between his ribs and made herself a home. “Yeah, I think we’re on the same page.”

“Good,” she says, rising so she can press the gentlest of kisses to his lips.


End file.
